(First presented as a conference paper; EPTC / Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Waterloo, Canada, May 2012).

ABSTRACT

Any attention paid to the positioning of
telecommunications installations in natural landscapes usually relates to the
aesthetic impact. However, such paraphernalia, particularly when contrasted
with natural surroundings, invites us to think beyond the visible. Through
Heidegger's accounts of Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit, as well as his later
articulations on 'Nature' as it is subjected to the ordering principles of
Gestell, this paper aims to highlight the overlaps of the natural and the
technological worlds inhabited by communications structures, considering the
relationship between the human and the natural realms, through the uncertain
electromagnetic phenomena that envelops the two. The essay is underpinned by
the extended phenomenological description of an encounter with such technology
that includes, following Anthony J. Steinbock's outline of a phenomenological
approach that might begin with the 'facts of the everyday sciences', some
reference to the basic concepts of physics involved in transmissions
technology.